A cool breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
the bend ahead. It was very quiet. Only the sound of our footsteps,
as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
broke the stillness of that lonely place.

Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
not be acquainted with her share in the matter.

"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith. "If we keep that straight before us,
according to our information we shall strike the hulk."

I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
of horror, peculiar, unique. He was not as other men.
The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.

Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
always about the London river. Undoubtedly it was his highway,
his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
Always he made his headquarters upon the river. It was significant;
and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
for our future guidance.

"Bear to the right," directed Smith. "We must reconnoiter
before making our attack."

We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
we played our parts. When I had lain in the East End opium den,
when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.

The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
of the running tide. Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
a rough pier showed. Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.

Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
to the staging above the hulk. A wooden ladder led out and down
to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.

"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.

Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared
below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.

Rather, white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
He had witnessed my accident, but--

"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear. "We dare not turn back now."

He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
I perforce following.

At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
It was fitted up as a laboratory. A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
wooden floor. Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
about me, incisive, commanding:

The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
clings in my memory. In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!

Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
leaped and chattered a little marmoset.

That was an electric moment. I was prepared for anything--
for anything except for what really happened.

The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.

I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
in the narrow doorway. The hulk moved beneath our feet
like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.

Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.

Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.

A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.

"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
For God's sake keep him covered. But a dacoit has his knife
at my throat!"

Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled. But his glance never wavered
from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.

I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
but a few seconds. To me those seconds were each a lingering death.

There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
the girl had betrayed us!

Smith made no reply. I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
in a whistling voice.

"So?" The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
have captured one of my people, too. I congratulate you.
She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."

The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.

"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"

"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
You, I take it, know as little of mine. My Burmese friend and
Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
word to leave it there. I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
my steps. I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
Is it agreed?"

We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
cover of Smith's revolver. Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset. The dacoit,
dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
a scene in that place.

"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.

"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said. "No one could
dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."

Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
too, must have known.

The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
my friend began shedding his coat, collar and waistcoat.

"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
"We have a poor chances but we are both fairly fit.
To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."

We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
our fate to-night.

I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for. To the south
was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
on the night and was answered--was answered again.

"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth. "A servant of the Crown
in the East makes his motto: `Keep your word, though it break
your neck!' I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."

So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.

Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
was practically nil.

At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
decide our fate. The professional murderers who pursued us ran
like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming, knives.
For a long time neither of us looked back.

And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.

More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.

"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith. "We must make an attempt
to break into the empty cottage. Only chance."

I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
cannot speak. But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
in time that would not have disgraced a crack man. Not once again did
either of us look back. Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
My heart seemed to be bursting. My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
Once I stumbled.

As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.

It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
into the interior darkness. Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
I almost fell over his recumbent body.

Madly I snatched at the door. His foot held it open.
I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to. As I turned,
the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.

That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt. With the last ounce
of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
and protruded above my head.

A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.

"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand. "My fault. I shouldn't have let, you come."

From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
a long tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report.
And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.

One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
to his account.

A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.

Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
have been upon our trail. The room was full of pungent smoke.
I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
turned towards me. Something familiar there was in that long,
gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.

"You have failed," she replied. "I must go back to him.
There is no other way."

Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
escape from death, I opened the door. Coatless, disheveled figures,
my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.

Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.